What Kate Smith, bless her, might say

Singer Kate Smith is seen on the screen before Game Six of the 2010 NHL Stanley Cup Final between the Chicago Blackhawks and the Philadelphia Flyers at the Wachovia Center on June 9, 2010 in Philadelphia, Pa. The Flyers have covered the Smith statue outside Xfinity Live! and will no longer play her recording of “God Bless America.”

Singer Kate Smith is seen on the screen before Game Six of the 2010 NHL Stanley Cup Final between the Chicago Blackhawks and the Philadelphia Flyers at the Wachovia Center on June 9, 2010 in Philadelphia, Pa.

Singer Kate Smith is seen on the screen before Game Six of the 2010 NHL Stanley Cup Final between the Chicago Blackhawks and the Philadelphia Flyers at the Wachovia Center on June 9, 2010 in Philadelphia, Pa. The Flyers have covered the Smith statue outside Xfinity Live! and will no longer play her recording of “God Bless America.”

Singer Kate Smith is seen on the screen before Game Six of the 2010 NHL Stanley Cup Final between the Chicago Blackhawks and the Philadelphia Flyers at the Wachovia Center on June 9, 2010 in Philadelphia, Pa.

Kate Smith, the singer best known for “God Bless America” — and, most recently, for “That’s Why Darkies were Born” and “Pickaninny Heaven” — died in 1986.

Therefore, she can’t issue a tearful, public apology for singing those songs or songs such as “Blue Tail Fly” and “My Old Kentucky Home” before the lyrics were changed to make it more palatable for the Kentucky Derby crowd.

She can’t explain that the 1931 hit song “That’s Why Darkies Were Born” — a song that says someone had to pick the cotton, plant the corn, laugh at trouble and be content with any old thing — is satirical. Not was satirical, mind you. It is as satirical today as it was the day it was recorded almost a century ago.

She also can’t explain that the “Pickaninny Heaven,” a song written by Broadway and film composers Arthur Johnston and Sam Coslow, was featured in the 1933 motion picture “Hello Everybody!” In her corny role as a radio personality who lived on a farm with her slimmer, cuter sister, her character dedicates the song to a group of black orphans who listen as the lady on the radio describes a place twice as high as the moon, where watermelons get in your way and a Swanee River flows with real lemonade. It’s also the place where their mammies, taken by the good Lord, will be waiting.

She can’t remind us that this was in 1933, when the Great Depression was tearing through America, and that she was earning in the neighborhood of $3,000 a week, making her the highest paid woman in radio — a distinction that, for a single woman, could disappear pretty quickly if certain boats were rocked. She also can’t sidenote a 1933 New York Times review that said, “On the sentimental side of ‘Hello, Everybody,’ its lyric heroine is made to illustrate the idea that nobody really loves a fat girl.” Moreover, nobody would really care if one got fired.

She can’t point out that had her career tanked after “Hello, Everybody!” — which cost around $2 million to make — bombed at the box office, “God Bless America” might not have been recorded in 1938. And she can’t defend or distance herself from the objectionable songs she sang in the past, although she might point out that nobody seems to be making a peep about the men who wrote those songs, some of whom are highly acclaimed and are in the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Like her, they are all dead.

She can’t make excuses for the social inequalities the Greatest Generation left unchecked while it was busy with World War II, which is not to say that she wouldn’t try. She might defend absolution for all generations of such infractions based on the struggles of the day. Or she might angrily object to the removal of a statue in her likeness because they lyrics she’s being shamed for do not reflect what was in her heart.

Then again, she might point an accusatory finger at the fact that almost a century after those cringeworthy songs, America is still racially split.

All of this is speculation. We don’t know what she’d say because Kate Smith died in 1986.

What we do know is that we can’t move forward without having a clear idea of why we end traditions and take down statues. We need to understand why words and actions that offend don’t deserve a place in the spotlight. And we need to question social injustices happening today in real time.